An artificial marble is a common name of synthesized products embodying a texture of a natural rock by compounding additives such as natural stone dusts, minerals and/or resin chips to a base such as a cement or a resin, for example, an acrylic resin, an unsaturated polyester resin and/or an epoxy resin, and, if necessary, adding an additive such as a pigment.
The artificial marbles may include, as representative classes, acrylic artificial marbles, polyester artificial marbles, epoxy artificial marbles, melamine artificial marbles or engineered stone (E-stone) type artificial marbles and the like. Such artificial marbles have a beautiful appearance and an excellent workability, are lighter than natural marbles and have an excellent strength. Therefore, the artificial marbles are widely used as counter tables and various interior materials. However, hitherto known artificial marbles have embodied appearance effects through mainly combining single-colored opaque chips. There is a limit for such artificial marbles to embody patterns similar to natural marbles and granite, and the like. Therefore, many researches have been carried out to develop artificial marbles having appearance closer to natural marbles.
Korean Patent No. 376,605 discloses an artificial marble panel in which chips having different colors and specific gravities, such as low, medium and/or high specific gravity chips, are distributed in a different patterns on the surface and the back of said panel. However, the above technology had a limit to embody a texture similar to a natural rock, since it is one such that, by constituting the specific gravity of chips themselves to be different from that of a base resin of the panel, different chips each other are distributed inside the panel.